Aperture: Photographs

Aperture: Photographs

Date

Jan 22 2018 - Apr 01 2018
Expired!

This exhibition follows the evolution of the Aperture Foundation through a display of photographs from its print and fundraising programs made over a period of fifty years. In the process, it charts the evolution of photography itself.

Aperture was originally conceived in 1952 at an Aspen Institute conference on the future of photography as a magazine promoting the appreciation of photography as an art form. Attendees included Minor White who became founding editor and publisher, along with co-founders Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and the historians/curators Beaumont and Nancy Newhall.

The limited-edition print program began in 1964 under White’s successor Michael Hoffman in support of Aperture’s publishing activities and continues today as an integral part of Aperture’s programming, offering audiences the opportunity to own an original work.

Aperture: Photographs is organized by Aperture Foundation. The exhibition is sponsored by 1285 Avenue of the Americas Art Gallery, in partnership with Jones Lang LaSalle, as a community-based public service. Aperture, a not-for- profit foundation, connects the photo community and its audiences with the most inspiring work, the sharpest ideas, and with each other—in print, in person, and online. Created in 1952 by photographers and writers as “common ground for the advancement of photography,”

Aperture today is a multi-platform publisher and center for the photo community. From its base in New York, Aperture Foundation produces, publishes, and presents a program of photography projects and programs—locally, across the United States, and around the world. www.aperture.org

Exhibition Images
To view the panel talk visit: Panel Discussion


Tiny in her Halloween costume, Seattle, Washington, 1983


Images from top to bottom:
Bruce Davidson Untitled (Couple on the Platform), 1980
Archival pigment print Edition of 50 and 5 artist’s proofs © Bruce Davidson / Magnum Photos

Hank Willis Thomas Black Power, 2006
Digital C-print Edition of 30 and 5 artist’s proofs

Mary Ellen Mark Tiny, Halloween, Seattle, 1983
Platinum print Edition of 5

Dorothea Lange Migratory Cotton Picker, Eloy, Arizona, 1940
From the Founders and Friends Portfolio, 2001
Platinum-palladium print Edition of 100 and 16 artist’s proofs © the Dorothea Lange Collection, Oakland Museum of California, City of Oakland. Gift of Paul S. Taylor

  • Artists Included:: Bill Armstrong, Olivo Barbieri, Letizia Battaglia, Jo Ann Callis, Robert Capa, Michal Chelbin, William Christenberry, Barbara Crane, Bruce Davidson, Michael Flomen, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Paul Fusco, Luigi Ghirri, Todd Hido, Eikoh Hosoe, Pieter Hugo, Graciela Iturbide, Rinko Kawauchi, Eva-Fiore Kovacovsky, Dorothea Lange, Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao, Danny Lyon, Mary Ellen Mark, Sally Mann, Richard Misrach, Lisette Model, James Mollison, Barbara Morgan, Richard Mosse, Vik Muniz, Matthew Pillsbury, Sylvia Plachy, Robert Rauschenberg, Sebastião Salgado, August Sander, Stephen Shames, David Benjamin Sherry, Stephen Shore, W. Eugene Smith, Edward Steichen, Paul Strand, Penelope Umbrico, Nick Waplington, Alex Webb, James Welling, Edward Weston, Minor White and Hank Willis Thomas

Hourly Schedule

Related Events

February 9, 2018
Discussion: Aperture Photographs
NMU faculty and community members discuss the historical, social and cultural backgrounds of several photographs on display in the exhibition. The discussion was led by Emily Lanctot (museum curator of collections and outreach).
Speakers:
Emily Lanctot, Lali Khalid, Patricia Killelea, Steve Frykholm, Tracy Wascom
Emily Lanctot
Curator
Emily Lanctot is the Curator of Collections and Outreach at NMU's DeVos Art Museum. She is also a Contingent Assistant Professor at NMU’s School of Art and Design where she has been teaching since 2010. Lanctot received a B.F.A. in Drawing and Painting from Northern Michigan University and an M.F.A. in Interdisciplinary Studio Arts from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Lanctot’s work has been shown in museums and galleries across the U.S. She works across media to examine cultural rituals and practices embedded in the everyday. Her work employs language to explore themes of identity, memory, the archive, and ideas surrounding place - including the human relationship to nature, public architecture, and domestic space.
Lali Khalid
Mehreen, or Lali, Khalid grew up in Pakistan. Her father introduced her to photography at a very young age. She has been taking pictures ever since. Lali’s work wanders between themes in landscape, abstraction and documentary photography, but has always centered itself on portraiture. She uses her work as a tool to explore themes of diaspora, identity, family and home in her own life and the lives of people she photographs. Her images depict and document cultural and private conflicts, as well as emotive effects of natural light, through quiet, narrative allusions. Lali earned her BFA from The National College of Arts in Lahore, and her MFA with distinction from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Her work has been shown in many galleries throughout Pakistan, Europe and the US. She currently lives and works in the United States where she also maintains an active teaching practice.
Patricia Killelea
Patricia Killelea is the author of the poetry collection Other Suns (Swan Scythe Press) and her second book, Counterglow, is a forthcoming title from Urban Farmhouse Press. She is also an experimental filmmaker, and her poetry films have been featured in Atticus Review, Poetry Film Live and Moving Poems; her films have been screened and short-listed at the O Bhéal International Poetry Film Festival (2017), and long-listed for the Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival (2016). She holds a Ph.D. in Native American Studies at the University of California, Davis, and a Master's degree in Creative Writing, also from UC Davis. She is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Northern Michigan University.
Steve Frykholm
Herman Miller, Inc.
Tracy Wascom
While no discrete moment marks its outset, Tracy Wascom has been engaged in the arts for almost as long as she can remember; whether utilizing photography, computers, video, drawing, or traditional sculpting techniques. Her practice is driven by the desire to explore the myriad edges we use to define and demarcate our world–from our moral and ethical boundaries to the geography of maps. She enjoys investigating the ways we designate and divide beauty from ugliness, right from wrong, truth from fiction, dangerous from safe, even here from there by borders that seem clear but are often more deliciously ambiguous. Wascom earned her BFA in Art from the University of Louisiana Lafayette and her MFA in Photography from Syracuse University. Her work has been shown in galleries and museums across the United States and more recently in Budapest. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Foundations and Art History at Northern Michigan University.
Northern Michigan University
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Director
Emily Lanctot
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